Nazi Use Of Education Essay

Children tried their best to continue schooling, by attending secret classes organized by adults. Children learned how to hide books from the Nazis, to avoid being caught. Jania David, a young Polish Jewish child, remembers: “Schools were forbidden, but parents organized small groups of children, four or five at a time, and of course there was no lack of teachers. We met once or twice a week in somebody’s room, usually in a different room every week because there was a death penalty for the children, the teachers, the parents and in fact everybody in the house, if we were discovered” (Remembering: Voices of the

“The future of the German nation depends on its youth and the German youth shall have to be prepared for its future duties”

Once, Adolf Hitler said, “It’s not the truth that matters, but victory.” Obviously, this quote shows that Hitler’s mindset was directed towards winning, and not his moral values. He made false accusations about the innocent Jews, killing over six-million of them. These false accusations were simple, repeated, and, eventually, people believed it. The rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party affected how people viewed the Jews at the time. To begin, events in Adolf Hitler’s life lead to his viewpoints and affiliations. Secondly, the creation of the Nazi Party was critical to the formation of Germany’s point of view. Lastly, Jewish people had been used as scapegoats for the loss of World War I and Germany’s economic crisis.

The education of the children was key in perpetuating the beliefs of the Nazis and the Party. In Nazi Germany, children were taught to relish bloodshed and violence and to hate Jews ("Modern World History: Nazi Germany"), and the Party used this technique as well (Orwell 23). If children were taught to delight in bloodshed, they would be more accepting of violence aimed at a particular group; the children would not protest against this violence because of their morals or values. Instead, they would go beyond accepting the violence to cheering on the violence and enjoying it immensely.

At the end of WWI in 1918, Germany’s economy was in ruins. There were very few jobs, and bitterness began to take over the country. According to the text, “Hitler, a rising politician, offered Germany a scapegoat: Jewish people. Hitler said that Jewish people were to blame for Germany’s problems. He believed that Jews did not deserve to live.” (7) This was the birth of Antisemitism--prejudice against Jewish people. Europe’s Jewish people have always been persecuted due to their “different customs and beliefs that many viewed with suspicion.”(7) Hitler simply reignited the flames, and a violent hatred was born.

Germans were encouraged by a particular hate against the Jewish people, the hate led the Jewish people to believe that they had to die, and they didn’t want to say no because they believed Hitler was right about the Jewish people. This shows that the Germans had hatred towards Jewish people because they didn’t want to oppose otherwise. They were making the Jewish people believe that they were going to die because of all of the hate that was going against them. The last example to show that ordinary Germans were responsible was the event in 1938 known as Kristallnacht- Jewish businesses and homes destroyed by mobs. What this shows is how they were developing hate throughout other groups to be against the Jewish people.

One characteristic of totalitarianism being shown in the movie is education/indoctrination of the youth. They did this through an organization called the Hitlerjugend, or commonly referred to in the movie as the HJs. The nazis were brainwashing boys and young men into believing Hitler’s ideology. One example of how this is depicted in the movie is Peter being forced to join the HJ after getting in trouble with the police for stealing a radio. Once he joined he would then be introduced to the “teachings” of the HJ teachers, with the teachers derogating Jews. This is an example of education of the youth because young men were strongly encouraged and in Peter’s case, forced to join the HJ. Once they joined they were taught about Hitler’s ideas, with them usually bad-mouthing other races or anything that was an influence from America. Another way that education of the youth was being shown in the movie was when a Jewish boy was being beaten up by a group of HJs. This is an example of education of the youth because the Hitlerjugend were successfully brainwashing the boys and young men to discriminate and hate Jews. Finally education of the youth is shown when Thomas and Peter were discussing about the HJ, one interesting point that appeared during their discussion was when Thomas mentioned all the rewards

In Nazi Germany, conformity was extended to schools and universities as education meant indoctrination. Hitler used the schools to promote Nazi ideas and to educate the themes of racial hygiene and the glories of Germany’s past. By 1937, non-Nazi teachers were sacked under Hitler’s wishes and universities were purged of all Jews. The school curriculum was dominated by subjects that served Nazi’s purpose. The German History was rewritten to glorify the fatherland’s past and students were being taught Anti-Semitic ideas in school and every subject was given special emphasis on the Nazi themes. Thus, it is evident that Hitler has effectively initiated changes in schools and universities in order to indoctrinate the young with Nazi ideology and hence mould a future generation of loyal supporters of the Nazi state.

I asked Karl Boem-Tettelbach how it was possible in the 1930s that someone could respect Hitler and what he was doing for Germany when Jews were forced to lose their jobs and leave the country. In his reply spoke, I believe, for millions of other Germans: "That never came up. Everybody thought the same, that you were in a big team and you didn't separate from the group. You were infected. That explains it a bit." (2) And as for actual officers, during the Nuremberg Trials, a Commandant named Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoess had this to say of his indifference, "Don't you see, we SS men were not supposed to think about these things; it never even occurred to us. And besides it was something already taken for granted that the Jews were to blame for everything….It was not just newspapers like Sturmer but it was everything we heard. Even our military and ideological training took for granted that we had to protect Germany from the Jews….We were all so trained to obey orders without even thinking that the thought of disobeying an order would never have occurred to anybody." (3) So there is a delicate balance between conscious and unconscious actions of every individual of Nazi Germany. The majority was bewitched by the charismatic Hitler who not only gave them a reason as to why they were suffering with ubiquitous propaganda, but also promised to strengthen Germany until she was beyond restored. (4) For some it was an underlying hatred that had finally found a vent. For

One of Hitler’s many ambitions for Germany was to achieve total Aryan supremacy. Hitler wanted to make all Germans perfect physical specimens. All of them tall and strong with blue eyes and blond hair though he himself was short, with brown eyes and hair. Hitler claimed that the Germans were the purest Aryans and therefore superior to all other peoples. Hitler made sure that all Germans knew this, he told the German people what they wanted to hear, that they were in fact the master race and that they were superior to any other persons. Although many were opposed to Hitler’s idea of Aryan supremacy the German people supported him enthusiastically regardless.

“Young boys were organized into the Deutches Jungvolk (German Young People, informally called Pimpfe), older boys into the Hitlerjugend (HJ). The Deutches Jungvolk could have boys from the ages of 10-14 and the Hitlerjugend could have boys from the ages of 14-18. When World War II started, more than ninety percent of German youth were members of these organizations. Ninety percent is a huge percentage. That means that almost every teenage German, Gentile was a member of some kind of Nazi Youth Organization. Many of these youth organization actually over rid the parental control on the children. Many were told that the individual or the family was less important than the state. If children had disloyal parents, they were encouraged to report them. When the boys weren’t in school or at home with their parents, they were with their youth organization learning military maneuvers and different chants. An example of the one the chants that the Hitler Youth used to march around chanting are: “Comrades, we march to the field, red today, tomorrow dead, Comrades it must be that way.” If the boys made any achievement in the Hitler Youth, credit in school would be given to the student. The teacher must respect the authority of the youth leaders, regardless of their age or attitude towards them. Blind obedience seems to be a common theme. Children are taught these ideologies without knowing the true real reason. Teachers are forced to believe and follow these ideologies if they wish to

Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party, had ambitions to create a perfect race. This meant eliminating the Jewish race along with other undesirable races and disabled humans.

First of all, the Nazis used false information about Jewish people and utilized negative Jewish stereotypes to legitimize the horrific acts of violence during the Final Solution. The Nazis were evil towards the Jews. Movies, newspapers, and posters were only some of the ways anti-semitic messages were thrown out into the public. A newspaper called Der Sturmer pumped out stories devoted to showing Germans how dirty Jews were (Marcovitz 15). Things like “Jews are immoral, indecent, dishonest, ugly, fat, not human, cannibalistic”, and “Jews eat their children and drink their blood”, were common headlines (Marcovitz 15). Jews were not humans. They were on the same level as bugs and needed to be exterminated from Germany and all of Eastern Europe. Also, stereotypes from 100’s of years ago were still alive and well. Jews were tax collectors a long time ago, and some people still hated them for it. Some people could not let go of old derogatory lies and the Nazis loved this. Hate towards the Jews was stronger than kindness and the Nazis fed off of this. If people saw the propaganda and the heard old stereotypes, then maybe they would hop on board with the Nazis.

Pupils had to greet their teachers by saying "Sieg Heil" and by performing the Nazi salute. Swastikas, propaganda, racist material and photographs of Hitler hung in every classroom. Teachers were issued with guidelines to regulate the content of text books including extracts from Mein Kampf which were discussed and, on occasion, put to memory. There was additional emphasis put on physical education which was intended to develop fitness, discipline and esprit de corps. Pupils were made to do 5 hours a week, in senior schools, of physical education and boxing was made compulsory.

The most widely known aspects of Nazi ideology are their hatred of Jewish people and their tireless efforts to exterminate the entire race during their rule. This distinctly Nazi belief of antisemitism is not one that the Nazis created. It instead had existed for several thousand years throughout Germany and all of Europe. As Stackelberg and Winkle explain, “The origins of the stereotype of Jews as immoral materialists can be traced to the unwillingness of Jews to give up their religion in favor of world-renouncing Christianity” (Stackelberg and Winkle, Anti-Semitism, p. 2). This feeling of hatred towards Jews persisted for centuries, especially in countries that had a majority of Christian citizens. There were a number of people that continually perpetuated these anti-Semitic views with the works that they published and their actions towards Jews. A great